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Review of THE NINTH CLOUD

Zena walks the towpaths along London’s canals, wondering at passing airliners, one of which vanished along with her parents taking away her old life. Her new life revolves around the mysterious artist Bob, who is intent on staging a theatre performance using ‘real people;’ characters who inhabit the derelict neighbourhood. Convinced that Bob is the centre of her universe, Zena sets out on a mission to help him fulfil his Quixotic quest. Chance brings her to the door of French artiste Jonny- who falls for Zena much in the way she has fallen for Bob.

Jane Spencer’s film is an odyssey of sorts, linking several hubs (Zena’s apartment, Bob’s commune, Jonny’s hotel), each with its own cast of idiosyncratic personalities. It is these characters and their existence that make up the beating heart of Spencer’s film. Zena herself (the superb Megan Maczko) permanently inhabits a film character from ‘Les Enfants du Paradis,’ an idea she got from Bob. Bob (an understated Michael Madsen) presides over his adopted street circus like a refugee from Easy Rider. Jonny (veteran French actor Jean-Hugues Anglade) lives with Brett, his ludicrous co-trustfundee (played with scenery-chewing verve by Leo Gregory) and his tabloid-chasing entourage. Zena’s story thus becomes an uneasy quest to find reality.

Spencer serves all of this as broad-strokes satire with moments of genuine darkness. In line with Zena’s shaky grasp on existence, little is explained and much left up to the audience. Here a little more backstory might have given the film weight (but then it would have to be called The Third cloud, or maybe Fourth?).

Michael Madsen gives the kind of thoughtful, restrained performance we always suspected him capable of. Megan Maczko treads a line between irrational and beguiling. Spenser gives us a film which is inventive, quirky, and beautifully shot.